Enento Group Oyj ($ENENTO)

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Enento's Q1 2026 results webcast. My name is Arto Paukku, and I'm the Managing Director for Finland. As usual, I'm joined today by our CEO, Teppo Paavola; and CFO, Elina Strahlman. As this is our first quarter reporting under the new segment structure, Carl Brynielsson and I will cover the segment view and results. Carl is the Managing Director for Norway and Denmark and the Interim Managing Director for Sweden. Teppo will start with the key highlights from the quarter, after which Carl and I will walk you through the segment performance. Elina will then provide a closer look at our financial results. After the presentation, we'll open the session for your questions, and you're welcome to send them in at any time using the tool. With that, I'll hand it over to Teppo.

Thank you, Arto. Let's start with highlights from the quarter. We delivered a solid performance despite a challenging and uncertain market environment. Overall, we achieved growth across all segments, which demonstrates the resilience of our business model. Profitability also improved during the quarter. One of the key highlights was that our business in Sweden returned to growth after a prolonged decline. We also saw significant profitability improvement in Sweden. Compliance services continued to develop positively in Sweden, and our product offering was strengthened with the launch of a new beneficial ownership tool. During Q1, we transitioned to a country-based organization and reporting structure, which I will go through in more detail soon. Finally, last week, we announced the initiation of change negotiations in Finland and Sweden to support strategy execution, simplify the operating model, and improve operational efficiency. The change negotiations concern all employees in Finland and Sweden. According to a preliminary estimate, the planned measures could lead to a maximum reduction of approximately 60 full-time equivalents. The negotiations are expected to conclude during the second quarter of 2026, and the outcome will be communicated as part of the interim report for the second quarter. At the same time, we have identified a need to build new types of competencies and to invest in new capabilities. Therefore, it is not possible to assess the net impact on headcount or cost base at this stage. Overall, Q1 represents a strong start to the year and positions us well for the coming quarters even in a challenging market environment. Let's then look at the key figures in more detail. First quarter was strong with growth across all key metrics. Net sales grew by 2.6% and reached EUR 39.6 million, and as said, witnessed growth in all reporting segments. Profitability improved with adjusted EBITDA increasing to EUR 13.5 million, up 6.4%. This improvement resulted in the expansion of the adjusted EBITDA margin to 34.1%, highlighting the scalability of our business model. Cash generation was very strong and free cash flow amounted to EUR 11.1 million. This was supported by excellent cash conversion, which reached 90%. Overall, the first quarter performance shows that Enento is delivering profitable growth, providing a solid foundation for the rest of the year. As announced in March, we are transitioning to a country-based operating model. Our previous business areas, Business Insight and Consumer Insight were replaced by new country-based segments. The change is intended to strengthen commercial accountability, clarify end-to-end profit and loss ownership, and enhance customer proximity across our markets. So under this new model, commercial and financial responsibility will be anchored at the country level. Finland and Sweden will operate as separate country units, while Norway and Denmark will operate under one combined country structure. Starting from this Q1 report, we are aligning our financial reporting with the new operating model. Going forward, performance will be reported for 3 distinct segments: Finland, Sweden, and the combined Norway-Denmark segment. Financial results will be disclosed separately for each segment, increasing transparency and enabling more focused performance management. The transition to a country-based organization is a natural next step in strengthening our execution and accountability. By bringing profit and loss responsibility closer to our markets and customers, we increase focus, speed, and performance across the group. As part of this organizational change, we also made changes to Enento's executive management team. Elina Strahlman will continue as Group Chief Financial Officer, and her role will remain unchanged and a core part of the new setup. We made two appointments related to the new country units. Arto Paukku, who has served as Enento's Chief Marketing and Customer Officer, has been appointed Country Managing Director for Finland. Carl Brynielsson, who previously led the Business Insight business area, has been appointed Country Managing Director for Norway and Denmark and will also serve as Interim Country Managing Director for Sweden. Group-wide functions will continue to provide shared platforms, governance models, and strategic direction while driving group-wide synergies across the organization. To further strengthen Nordic synergies, we have appointed Francesca Smedberg as Chief Product Officer. Francesca will play a pivotal role in advancing product development and innovation across all markets. She is responsible for driving cross-border collaboration and ensuring that product development supports both local and group level value creation. Technology and data operations will remain within the IT organization, led by Chief Information Officer, Annika Radestrom. The HR function will also continue to operate as a centralized support unit under Chief Human Resources Officer, Sari Ek. Let's then move on to a current theme that is reshaping Enento and the entire industry, artificial intelligence. Enento as a leading data services company has used machine learning or neural networks for a long time in its services. And machine learning, of course, is the basis for generative AI, which is the focus area of the current AI boom. So our data scientists have a deep understanding of what it takes to also utilize generative AI while using machine learning is, of course, not going away. AI creates a competitive advantage for providers with large proprietary data sets and customer trust. Enento is in a strong position here, and I will illustrate this with a few examples. First, smarter services. This refers to AI enabling the next generation of data-driven services. New service categories are emerging, for example, in fraud detection and ESG risk management. In addition, personalizing services to customers' needs becomes easier and decision-making is embedded into customers' workflows through API integrations. At Enento, we are advancing AI adoption across our entire service portfolio, for example, in ownership information services in Sweden, company information summaries in Norway, and PSD2 and fraud prevention services. We're also moving towards faster prototyping. Second, smarter data, which refers to leveraging new data capabilities and intelligence. Unstructured data can be processed and structured at scale with AI. Data quality monitoring and correction can be automated. As mentioned, with AI, large proprietary data sets become an even larger competitive advantage. Enento uses AI in several products to acquire alternative and unstructured data and to structure and enrich it. Finally, smarter operations, which focuses on improving operational efficiency. AI accelerates coding and model development and it automates internal processes, reducing manual work. Additionally, AI reduces the maintenance cost of large-scale data infrastructure. Enento uses AI in customer service, sales management, product development, and internal workflows. Then let's move on to the business segment's update. I will hand over to Arto, who will go through the developments in Finland.

Thank you, Teppo. So first, let me introduce Enento's business in Finland. We operate in Finland through well-known brands, Asiakastieto and Emaileri. We are the leading provider of credit and business information, supported by proprietary data assets and industry-leading scoring models. In 2025, Finland accounted for 48% of the group's net sales. Business information accounts for around 2/3 of segment revenue and helps customers make better decisions across the entire customer life cycle, all the way from prospecting and onboarding to monitoring and collections. The offering in Finland covers credit and counterparty risk, compliance and due diligence, fraud prevention, sales and marketing insights, ESG services as well as real estate data and information services to support housing transactions and collateral valuations. Then consumer information services account for roughly 1/3 of the segment revenue, and they support responsible and efficient lending and marketing, providing data and insights on consumer creditworthiness as well as support in preventing fraud. Most revenue comes from financial sector clients and credit information services, complemented by demand from sectors such as telecoms and utilities. In addition, Enento provides consumer marketing-related services to a wide range of B2C customers, helping them to improve customer acquisition and retention through data-driven targeting and segmentation. Then let's move on to the highlights of Q1. We saw good growth in Finland despite the weak market environment. Net sales grew by 2.3% at comparable rates and amounted to EUR 18.6 million. Consumer credit information volumes grew and some new customers entered the market. We also saw good development in consumer marketing services, thanks to successful sales efforts. Real estate and apartment information services grew strongly, thanks to good demand and new services. We see good traction in this area also going forward. Compliance sales declined slightly due to some larger one-offs in the comparison period. Then on the profitability side, adjusted EBITDA declined by 2.9% and amounted to EUR 7.9 million. This was mostly due to higher IT maintenance expenses and increased personnel costs. IT costs were impacted by the infrastructure transition, resulting in a cost shift from depreciations to IT operating expenses. Moving on to some of the new innovation in Finland. And let's take then a look at the new Rating Alfa Pore model more closely. The product will be launched in Finland during Q2, and the model has been already been validated using multiple data sets and its predictive power has been shown to be high. And it has remained consistent across different types of customer portfolios, supporting our confidence for a successful market rollout. The rating model predicts default risk over a 12 months and supports more reliable and consistent consumer credit decisioning. The model is designed for customers who are eligible to use the positive credit register data and fits naturally into the new PCR-driven credit assessment environment. The Rating Alfa Pore combines data from the positive credit register and company connections. Asiakastieto's own CCIS membership is not mandatory for this product, which then significantly broadens the addressable market. There will be an enhanced version of the model for our CCIS members that leverages the proprietary data for additional predictive power. And population data is not used, which improves the cost efficiency without weakening the predictive performance. The funnel illustration on the right-hand side demonstrates how Enento's multiple data sources are layered step-by-step to refine the credit decisioning. Rating Alfa Pore plays a central role in this process by helping to identify profitable segments that are currently either underserved or even rejected. At the moment, there are no direct competitors offering a comparable solution. The main competition comes from the customers' in-house modeling teams. But even in those cases, customers often choose our solution as the complementary model or as a benchmark alongside their own models. All right. That was Finland, and then I'll hand over to my colleague, Carl.

Thank you, Arto, and good afternoon, everyone, from my behalf as well. I'm Carl Brynielsson, and I'm the Interim Managing Director for Enento's business in Sweden, as well as Managing Director of Norway and Denmark. I'll start by introducing our business in Sweden. Enento operates in Sweden through its established brands, UC and Allabolag, which provide consumer and business information services to customers across industries. Customers include financial institutions, large corporates, SMEs, and consumers. In 2025, Sweden accounted for 45% of the group's net sales. Consumer information services represents a bit more than half of Enento's revenue in Sweden and are largely based on unique data. The service supports responsible lending and other consumer-facing decision processes by providing data and insights for creditworthiness and affordability assessments as well as tools to help prevent fraud. The primary customer base is the financial sector, complemented by use cases in industries such as telecom and utilities. Consumers can also use online channels to review their own credit information and help protect against identity theft. In addition, Enento provides consumer marketing services to B2C companies via its online channels. Business information accounts for roughly the other half of revenue in Sweden and supports decisions across customer life cycle from onboarding credit granting to monitoring and collections. The offering typically includes credit and counterparty risk insights, compliance screening, fraud prevention, and sales and marketing insights. In addition, Enento provides real estate data and services to support housing transactions, collateral valuation, and property climate risk assessments. So then to the quarterly highlights. Q1 was a strong quarter for Sweden with return to growth and significant profitability improvements. Sales grew by 2.2% and amounted to EUR 18.1 million. Consumer credit volumes continued stabilizing and development was good, especially towards the end of the quarter, although geopolitical uncertainty and inflation still impacted consumer confidence. In premium services, our SME transformation is on track with fully digital renewals with acceptable churn but some negative impact on new sales. Compliance services continued to develop positively with new deals closed and a growing pipeline. Compliance service offering was also complemented with a new tool launched for beneficial ownership data. Real estate services also delivered strong growth, supported by both healthy underlying growth as well as some large one-off transactions. Adjusted EBITDA improved 17.1% and amounted to EUR 5.7 million. The improvement was mainly driven by savings in data acquisition costs and personnel expenses following savings actions. In addition, sales commissions decreased due to efficiency gains and lower new sales related to the SME transformation. Let's then move on to Norway and Denmark. In these countries, Enento operates through the well-known Proff brand, primarily saving SMEs through digital self-serve channels. Proff is a digital company information site where users can search and compare companies and access key facts such as financial statements and key ratios, official representatives and roles, ownership information and company events. In Norway, the business is primarily driven by visibility solutions, enabling companies to promote themselves through company profiles and display advertising products and customers can also purchase one-off reports. The segment also includes Forvalt, which provides subscription-based data-driven services to support SME credit risk management as well as company information and data distributed directly to customers via API. Norway accounts for roughly 85% of the segment's revenue. In Denmark, the offering is focusing on visibility solutions and company promotion. Denmark accounts for roughly 15% of the segment's revenue. Together, Norway and Denmark segment accounted for 7% of the group's total net sales in 2025. Norway and Denmark had a strong quarter with growth and margin improvements. Net sales improved by 8.3% to EUR 2.9 million. In Norway, this was driven by data sales and premium services, while advertising market was a bit more turbulent. We are also transitioning from a primarily telesales-driven model towards digital sales in Norway, which will improve customer access and support profitability over time. In Denmark, strong growth continued in Freemium. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 44.3% to EUR 0.7 million. The improvement was driven by lower personnel costs, improved sales efficiency, and timing of marketing and development actions. Then I will hand over to Elina for the CFO highlights.

Thank you, Carl. And I will start by repeating briefly still the segment results and development in net sales. So we had year-over-year growth as well as quarter-over-quarter growth in all our segments. And as Teppo also mentioned, we are specifically happy about the development in Sweden, where we recorded growth after a prolonged decline. Then moving on to adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA improved by 6.4% at comparable FX rates and amounted to EUR 13.5 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin improved to 34.1% and the profitability was supported by increased net sales and efficiency actions. Going then through the line-by-line development in adjusted EBITDA, and starting with materials and services. Materials and services, meaning our data acquisition costs decreased year-on-year and the development was supported by savings actions. We have taken targeted actions, especially in Sweden, to reduce data acquisition costs, and that is then visible now as the decreased cost overall in materials and services. Personnel expenses, on the other hand, increased despite lower level of FTEs, and this was due to salary inflation and higher level of incentives. Other operating expenses increased as well and the increase was driven by IT costs that were impacted by the infra transition that resulted in a cost shift from depreciations to IT operating expenses in Finland. We also had some OpEx development work during Q1, mainly in Sweden, that then impacted IT costs also increasingly. IT cost increases and other cost inflations were partially offset by lower sales commissions in Sweden that decreased following the SME transformation as well as lower level of new sales, meaning sales mix impact. Then capitalized production for own use, that also increased as planned as the completion of infra transition projects enabled a greater internal focus on product development. And then finally, stronger Swedish krona supported both the net sales and profitability development with reported FX rates. Moving on to cash flow. So free cash flow was also very strong and increased by EUR 4.1 million and amounted to EUR 11.1 million. The improvement was driven by improved operational results, a tax refund received related to prior periods and almost EUR 2.5 million lower one-off payments compared to Q1 last year. Also, investment levels were lower following the capacity optimization actions that were taken last year. Cash conversion was very strong at 90% and adjusted cash conversion that excludes the impact from one-off payments was also strong at 84%. Then lastly, key indicators. So our cash position. We had cash at hand, EUR 21.2 million at the end of Q1 and our committed EUR 30 million credit facility remains fully unused. Net debt to adjusted EBITDA was below our target range and was at 2.5x. Gross investments were EUR 1.6 million and lower than last year following the capacity optimization actions, as mentioned. And adjusted EPS increased to EUR 0.31 per share, supported by improved results. Share of new services was 9%, remaining close to our target range of 10%. Thank you. I'll hand over now to Teppo.

Thank you, Elina. Okay. With Q1 behind us, the macroeconomic and geopolitical environment certainly still remains uncertain. While volatility continues, our business volumes have stabilized and we have already delivered growth in the first quarter, providing a solid base to continue for the remainder of the year. We expect macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties to persist during 2026. In Sweden, upcoming changes affecting loan brokers may continue to present further risks for Enento. Despite the continued uncertainty, we take decisive actions to support growth, profitability and cash flow. Based on this, we reiterate our guidance of net sales growth of 0% to 5% and an increase in adjusted EBITDA. Thank you. Now it is time for Q&A.

Yes. And let's start with the audience questions here. We don't have a microphone, so you can just present the question, and I will then repeat it. A lot of questions. So I'll try to remember most of them, but let's start with the volume development. So any insights that you could share besides what has been already mentioned for Q1 and maybe forward as well?

Yes, perhaps I'll start. So volume development was rather stable in both our main markets, Finland and Sweden. We saw some slight improvement towards the end of the quarter. Nothing that turned yet the needle. So overall, if we look at the good revenue development, a lot of it was driven by actions that we have also taken by ourselves, including pricing actions as well as then various deals and new sales. But what is, of course, good is that volumes have stabilized. And if we look at the current trading, we haven't seen in April any major drops or reactions to this ongoing geopolitical situation, for us as well.

Trying to repeat the question again. So the question was about the regulatory environment in Sweden, and the next milestones that we see ahead that might potentially change the environment.

So this now relates to the decisions for the loan brokers and their licensees. I think this was -- actually the deadline is in June. So after the second quarter, we will know more.

The question was about Sweden and the SME transformation over there, and we have stated that we have seen acceptable churn. So what do we actually mean by that?

Yes, I can take this. There's kind of two sides to this. One is what is the churn rate? And then, of course, how well are we doing in new sales. In this change, those 2 are a little bit connected because a lot of the work that used to be done externally is now done internally. But at the same time then that had an impact on the new sales. So even though -- so the churn has been better than in our plans or let's -- which let's say somewhat better than in our plans. But the new sales impact actually, which we have also already seen in the numbers comes all the way back from Q4 when the new sales was not as active. So that's what we're working on to improve now.

Then the question was that how do we see the share of new services of net sales going forward. So now we have seen 9% level for Q1, and do we anticipate that this would be a permanent level? Or how would the rest of the year look like?

Well, I mean, as you may remember, there are, of course, all the time varieties in the base of that KPI. When services mature, they fall off the metric and then new ones come in, and it's always a balance. However, when we look at it now, we see that this level for this year looks rather solid. And of course, new services is important part of our strategy as well and part of our ambition in terms of growth overall.

Then the final question was about the outlook and our confidence in the guidance that we have given out given the geopolitical uncertainty and uncertainty overall.

Yes. I think it's already been clear. Anybody, you asked them in December, what will things look like in April? Nobody would have predicted where we are now. And then when you read through economists' comments, they also change and especially most recently here in Finland downwards. So that remains the risk and we focus on the things that we can have an impact on. And the macro will then take up or down the underlying volumes. It's all we can really do.

All right. Very good. Thank you. And let's move on to the online questions. We have quite many questions, so I'll try to cluster them a little bit. So let's start with the ones which are sort of concerning the group. So what kind of competencies are we looking to add on the back of the change negotiations? And are we going to use subcontracting to fill the competence gaps before we recruit our own resources?

Yes, we are in the middle of the change negotiations, so I'd rather not go into details. These are still being discussed and as well as, of course, then internal moves. The organization has changed as a structure quite a bit. And so it's just too early to answer that.

Then connected to this, maybe, so could you remind us what are the key cross-border synergies going forward? Are these largely admin function related?

So all support is organized across the group. Or well, obviously, in the countries, there are also some supporting activities, but countries primarily have the customer-facing activities. And so that remains and we will strive to continue to improve. Now the product organization is a different kind of organization than what we've had before. And with the important difference that in the past, the P&L responsibility was in the product groups or business areas, and now it is in the countries, which focuses the product organization more clearly to building new products. IT is managed as a group-wide function. But as we also have reported in the past and this time as well, the underlying IT infrastructure, there are lots of differences across countries. So this is an ongoing development of how do we get the maximum value of our group-wide activities while being close to customers at the country level. This is the in-built tension in the organization, which you always have in every organization. This is the way that we have chosen to do it now.

Then to -- which functions are the change negotiations targeted at? I think you mentioned that already.

Yes, this is across all companies.

Exactly. But then continuing, so how big of a role does AI have in the targeted efficiency gains?

We don't want to say that many companies, I guess, this is being used quite widely. AI is very important for us and we are working on multiple fronts to get more value out of AI and of course, also understand what risks it may create for the business in various areas. So it changes the business a lot. But AI is not the reason for this current change negotiations. It is about simplifying the organization. And part of that, of course, is also that not all activities are now kind of group-wide or across countries, and that should simplify the organization as well.

Very good. Thank you. Let's continue with the AI theme a little bit. So what is the share of publicly available data of all new data that is added to your database currently?

So I can't answer that. And because I would actually say look at this a little bit differently. And it was also visible, for example, in one of the slides today where Arto was going through some of the product functionality in the Finnish credit. So our job is to combine various data sets into intelligence. And so even if one or many of the data sources were publicly available, once it goes through our machinery, through our analytics and is combined with our proprietary data and comes out, for example, as a scoring model or a rating model, it's a little bit sort of speculation to say which part of that is now public data and what is proprietary data. And some companies in the industry have gone as far as saying that everything is proprietary once it has gone through the analytics and comes out as a model. So this is something that we're working on. And maybe at the longer term, we could have some metric on this if this continues to be a question. But most important for us is to really turn this data into customer value, and that's the thing for us to measure.

Then in terms of profitability, which segment is the furthest away from its potential?

So there is -- we have up to thousands of different items that we charge the customers for all the way down to an individual data field. So getting to that level does not really make sense. And I think one of the areas where we really want to improve is on a continuous basis and which now there is more focus on the product organization because the profit and loss is no longer there, it is really to continue to learn in all kinds of ways what the actual customer problems are. And do that with data, do that with direct interface with the customers, do that by understanding what the usage of our products is. And that's where we have certainly the focus. And from there, we will probably continuously be better at answering that where are the additional opportunities. Of course, you can look at our services, some of them have been around for 100 years and some of them have been launched recently. So of course, the kind of addressable -- our market share is much, much smaller in the new services as part of the addressable market. So that's one way to look at this.

Then let's see what we have. So maybe we move on to the more country-specific questions. The improved gross margin in Sweden, you mentioned targeted savings. Are these savings permanent, i.e., should we assume the step-up in margin going forward for Sweden?

Yes, these are permanent. We have renegotiated certain data acquisition contracts that are now visible at the lower level of materials and services costs.

Then can you remind us on whether there is a seasonal variation for the consumer information revenues? Are the current revenue trends in the segment still pointing towards upside from your point of view?

The seasonality is rather low in consumer credit business and volumes overall. We have some peak days, timing of Easter may impact and timing of various holidays. But overall, it is -- the volumes do not change that much compared to various quarters.

Then one more for Sweden. How is the adjusted EBITDA margin in Sweden so weak despite much stronger gross margin? What was the EBITDA margin level in Sweden where the Consumer Insight volumes were highest during 2022?

Well, if I reply it in a way that I think it's good to remember that in Sweden, we have during the past 3 years, lost around EUR 15 million on the top line. Then if we look at, for example, some key figures from '22, we used to have 60 FTEs more in Sweden at that time. Our CapEx investment levels were on totally different level at that time. So margin is perhaps not the relevant measurement of comparison at this point. So overall, we have taken a lot of actions in previous years to secure the margin and get the efficiencies in when we have due to structural changes in Swedish credit lost a significant amount of very high-margin revenue.

Then one for Norway. Growth driven by data sales. Is this a onetime larger sale or just overall increased demand for data sales in Norway specifically?

It wasn't one-time.

No, I don't think, there are -- we do sell via APIs data. But overall, this development is mainly related to good increased demand in our subscription products in Norway.

Then a couple of questions connected to the Finnish performance. Maybe I can take this actually. So first question was about the premium and enterprise segments growth year-on-year in Q1. I could comment that the development in both areas were flattish, you could say, year-on-year. And yes, that's basically it. Then the next question was connected to new customers in the consumer credit area in Finland and what we mean by the new customers. So during Q1, we saw a couple of new lenders entering the market or activating their operations in Finland. And yes, depending on the lender, there's different services, of course, that they are implementing with. But it's really positive that after a while, we can see some activity in the market again. Then let's see what else do we have. Yes, where do we see the strongest competitive edge and where do we see the least competitive edge in the compliance area?

So I don't know about the least, but -- so the recent focus in compliance that we have talked about a lot is in Sweden and the capability that we have to offer a good quality company ownership data that helps our customers do their know-your-customer checks on these companies. It is not something that is available in any database to buy from. So it has taken quite a lot of work to create that capability. And this is an area where we hope to -- or hope is the wrong word, because there's actually new regulation coming up next year that will definitely push our customers to be even more prudent on understanding or knowing their customers. So that is why we believe that this market will continue to grow. And we do have a clearly differentiated product there.

Very good. I think that concludes the Q&A then. Go ahead.

Yes. So thank you, everyone, for joining the session, and we wish you a really nice Tuesday.

Thank you.

Thank you.